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36 Christopher Jon Heuer Corresponding Oval I think that appropriate suicide methods are one day going to be taught in kindergarten classrooms. Tut, tut, children! Yes! How many times do we jump? Once! And how many times do we cut? Once! Which way? Deep! Let me tell you about contempt. When I die I’m going to fuck with people’s corresponding ovals. I’m going to sugar-coat a gun barrel with cyanide honey; I’ll put it in my mouth and lick myself to death. My teeth will shatter around cold blue steel in a deadly rictus grin, but I will die happy simply because there will be no corresponding oval. Gallaudet Book 5/1/02, 9:55 AM 36 Christopher Jon Heuer 37 How did he die? ( ) Gun ( ) Poison Let me tell you about contempt. I would bleed off balconies yet not jump, since I can’t jump off balconies and not bleed. I would slice my wrists shallow and yet lean not-very-far over the railings . I would specifically try to hit older women, to splatter the fake white doves on their church-going hats with the red stains of my life. I would try to hit the sports pages of briskly-walking middleaged men in plaid suit coats, and the blonde-haired Barbie dolls of young girls attached by the hand to their Christmas-gloved mothers. Let me tell you about not knowing. I think of it and smile. When I’m dead I want my epitaph to be a grid of Tic-Tac-Toe played over and over again on top of itself. Every oval crossed out by an ‘X.’ Every space a question. Something filled in, yet something not. Something uncertain, and something uncontained. Something asleep, yet something poised—and watching. Sometimes it watches me. And sometimes not. Gallaudet Book 5/1/02, 9:55 AM 37 ...

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